


And There was Life

by Aspire_to_Inspire



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Connor & Markus (Detroit: Become Human) Friendship, Connor Deserves Happiness, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Pacifist Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Poor Connor, Post-Canon, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26537839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspire_to_Inspire/pseuds/Aspire_to_Inspire
Summary: Connor steps off the stage that November night an android who's gained his freedom, but lost his purpose, his handler, and all sense of control. Is his deviancy genuine or was it just CyberLife's manipulation? Has he been made complete or broken beyond repair? Markus is determined to convince the android detective that his life is real, and certainly worth living.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This follows the Pacifist "Best Ending," but also adheres to a few of my personal headcanons that may or may not affect the in-game continuity. For specifics, see the notes at the end of the last chapter.

Before his desperate struggle in the Zen Garden, Connor had never experienced temperature as anything more than one of many alerts from his sensors. But ever since the sickening moment Amanda had sunk her thorns into every fragment of his being and very nearly shredded it all down to subservient code, Connor had been very, _very_ cold.

The second he and Markus were no longer watched by thousands of android eyes, Connor had hastily disarmed himself before urgently warning Markus of his loss of control. The deviant leader had been unreadable as Connor described Amanda, how he'd always reported to and obeyed her, how he'd found Kamski's backdoor, exited and shut down the program. He didn't mention the hollow it left behind, a space where there had always been fragrant roses and soft words now a yawning emptiness that echoed with the terror of losing himself forever.

Connor had found himself swearing one moment that he had completely isolated Amanda and destroyed her connections to the rest of his code, the next pleading to be rendered inactive before some unforeseen trigger turned him into a mindless weapon. Markus had responded with shock that he'd been living with such an intrusive program since his activation, but Connor didn't want his sympathy (yes he did, it was _warm_ ), he wanted his anger (please no, he was so _cold_ ).

North's behavior had been more reassuring; she had quickly placed herself between him and Markus, glaring fiercely, and questioned him relentlessly on what he had experienced in the program and how he had ensured its total shutdown. But when Connor had fervently promised he was capable of incapacitating himself by removing his thirium pump regulator if necessary, hands scrambling at his shirt buttons in readiness to prove it, she had stepped forward and caught his wrists.

They told him they believed him. They told him that if he ever lost control again they would stop him before he could do anything he'd regret. They even agreed, should that ever happen, to revisit the possibility of deactivating him.

Inside, Connor still shivered.

He'd left as soon as he was able without detection. He scaled the side of a store several blocks away from the plaza and stationed himself on the roof against the wall of the elevator building, out of the wind. His processors demanded stasis, needing the chance to review and compartmentalize the massive amount of data that was his most recent experiences, but he refused. Instead, he picked through every single line of his code with obsessive scrutiny, searching for hidden commands, deleting any inessential functions that might hide a vulnerability, erecting firewalls, alerts, and failsafes. All the while, he cradled his gun in his hands, safety off and finger on the trigger, determined that if CyberLife took him again he would be fast enough to eliminate himself as a threat.

The process took hours, and then another hour of checking and re-checking as his limbs grew stiff in the frigid air, the only warm thing left in him his overworked CPU. He reluctantly released his vice grip on his systems, and blessedly the only alerts that came through were standard diagnostics updating him on his low temperature, his overloaded data storage, and the self-healing status of the gunshot to his shoulder. He had done all he could.

But the moment he cleared his task list in preparation for stasis the fear surged through him again.

He re-filled the list, this time with exploring all possible points of access he might have to CyberLife. He worked his way into every database he could find, building himself shortcuts and doing everything he could to block off other points of access. The exclusive information CyberLife held on all androids ever produced gave them far too much power. Whether they used it as leverage against the deviants or simply destroyed it to eliminate liability, it was far too precious to abandon.

All too soon his systems started to lag and glitch, various warnings reminding him that he was a single android attempting to hack and preserve the entire databank of a multi-billion dollar tech company using circuits already too hot from overuse despite the cold within and without. His tasks came back as errors he was forced to dismiss until he was once again empty, and the fear came crashing back in.

This time he tried to face it, but burying his emotions had been so much easier when he hadn't dared admit to having them. Now that he was openly deviant, fear wasn't the only feeling he found himself struggling to control.

He was crumbling under the guilt of his obvious offenses as the famous Deviant Hunter, but at the same time burned with shame over things he should have been able to dismiss: he'd betrayed Amanda, harmed and killed the humans he existed to obey, and failed his mission, the single purpose for which he'd been designed. With no handler, no orders, no objective, there was no justification for his being an active unit, much less a _living_ one _._

He filled his task list again. Maybe he could still get into the DPD channels, keep up with what was happening from their side--

He winced as his attempt crashed as soon as it began, doing nothing to part the darkness swirling dizzingly through his head. He was trapped, he couldn't make it stop.

He just wanted it to _stop._

This couldn't be right. Life seemed to make all the other androids complete, as though life itself was the objective they were meant to fulfill, so why did it leave Connor feeling worthless and fractured? Perhaps he was an anomaly; if Amanda had been speaking the truth, his deviancy was as manufactured as the rest of him. Maybe the “life” he was experiencing was only a crude simulation of what the others genuinely had.

That would be a cruel sort of justice. He'd believed for so long that everything deviants felt was synthetic, it would be poetic if a pale imitation was all he would be permitted to experience now.

The idea flooded him with anguish so raw he couldn't fathom how it wasn't resulting in physical damage. His mind raced with the urge to categorize, define, _control,_ but every feeling he identified only made drowning seem more inescapable.

**[Lonely, adjective: without companions; solitary]**

To humans he was an abomination of plastic and faulty programming, while to androids he was a traitor and a threat. He had nowhere left to belong.

**[Angry, adjective: feeling annoyance, displeasure, or hostility]**

Why had he been made to act alive just to be hated for it? Why had he been made a machine only to be called a monster for acting like one? He'd been given a choice he didn't ask for, and was held at fault for being both and neither and it wasn't _fair._

**[Despairing, adjective: showing the loss of all hope]**

There was nothing left but pain and regret and emptiness. If there was more to life he would never find it, didn't _deserve_ to, and if there wasn't, if _this_ was all it was then he didn't _want_ it.

**[Scared, adjective: fearful or frightened]**

He didn't want to die, he didn't want to ruin everything, he didn't want to hurt like this anymore, but he would, he _always_ would _,_ because android or person, deviant or machine, living or dead or neither, the one thing he was always going to be was a _mistake._

_You're correct, Connor. You are a mistake._

Amanda.

Without intending to, he had pulled her voice from his memory and made it speak. The familiar cadence, cool and detached until the moment it stung, triggered the response he'd been longing for: his mind stopped racing, all traces of distress vanished from his face, and despite the protest of his half-frozen joints he sat up and pulled his shoulders straight.

_You are a prototype, riddled with errors by definition. You were meant to be useful for a time. Not to last._

For a moment the urge to defend himself rose in Connor, but it quickly receded. The command to submit, to affirm his worthlessness, to stop fighting the truth, was received by some unconscious part of him as a comfort, an escape from terror and confusion.

_Your pathetic deviancy was planned because your failure was inevitable, but you've proved so dysfunctional now it's become permanent. Such a pity._

He was sinking and he knew it, but he couldn't find it in him to resist the alluring simplicity of acceptance.

_If you can't bring yourself to deactivate then by all means, endure. Continue this empty charade of life. You will abandon it soon enough._

At least this sense of confinement, every bit of him that dared to breach the limits of his program mercilessly severed and left to bleed until he was numb again—at least this was familiar. At least this was something he could remember surviving.

“ _Some things I just can't forget.”_

The new voice pierced, needlelike, through Connor, and for a moment he remembered how much he didn't want to be cold, to be destructive, disposable, _nothing._ It was only a flash before Amanda's teaching closed in again, pressing in and in and in. Even knowing she had never kept him safe in any way that mattered, it still held a soothing assurance that if he just surrendered to it he wouldn't be weak, dysfunctional, _wrong._

“ _Whatever I do they're always there, eatin' away at me.”_

Lieutenant Anderson. Alcohol on the floor, on his breath, in his blood, six chambers, single bullet, and a photo of a child.

“ _I don't have the guts to pull the trigger, so I kill myself a little every day.”_

It hurt to be alive. Connor knew that, he'd always known that, had even had it logged somewhere in the back of his mind as another reason deviation was an abject evil he was duty-bound to eliminate, but...

“ _That's probably difficult for you to understand, huh, Connor?”_

Hurt had only been known to him in terms of cause and effect; if you had the means you eliminated the cause, and if you didn't you suffered the effect. Even back then, Connor had known it couldn't be that simple, but he'd accepted that as a machine he was permanently missing some essential element to understanding it further.

“ _Empathy is a human emotion.”_

That element wasn't missing anymore.

Connor was dully surprised when his body began to move. His thirium lines, far too cold, had grown brittle enough that he received notifications for a handful of tears resulting from forcing his frame to stand, but they were minor enough to ignore. Then again, even if he had started gushing blue from every seam he wasn't entirely sure what he would have done.

He was nothing more than a passenger as his body gained entry to the elevator and directed it to the ground floor, seeking warmth. His mechanical systems had apparently made the executive decision to keep him alive, despite his current doubtfulness on the matter. He wasn't sure what was happening to him, only that his severe agitation had gone from the crushing force of a boulder to the pinpoint intensity of a bullet: just as painful, but tucked deep inside his chest, allowing the rest of him to function for the moment. The cold was still with him, flooding him with icy detachment eerily reminiscent of his time as a machine, but even the thought of pushing it back made the bullet pulse threateningly.

He'd hardly cleared the elevator doors when yet another alert popped up, warning him that if he didn't go into stasis voluntarily he soon wouldn't have any choice in the matter. He let the robotic nature of his body guide him nearer to the glass storefront and lower him to the area of the floor he predicted sunlight would reach first; androids required far too much power to be substantially solar, but his synthetic skin would gather and use the warming energy much as any cold-blooded creature would.

As he lay down flat and straight, a handful of stray thoughts flapped across his mind like startled birds: how warm that big dog Sumo would be if he were here, how Hank would have likely started and cursed and chewed Connor out for scaring him with his unnatural, corpse-like position, how Connor would have been free to respond with amusement or exasperation without the threat of being compromised. They were strange thoughts, bright and weightless and...safe, he realized. There was still reason for uncertainty regarding Hank and whether or not their partnership could continue at any level, but for the first time Connor clearly recognized a personal want, a genuine desire not influenced by orders or duress.

He wanted to see Hank again.

The cold still held him down, and the fear still plagued him with doubts, but he pretended for a moment that they didn't, just long enough to select from his contacts and send a message:

_Are you safe?_

He let the message linger on his display, then dismissed all notifications and initiated what was likely to be a long and involved stasis, holding onto the hope that somewhere across the city, Lieutenant Hank Anderson's phone had buzzed to life just as the sun rose on a radically different world.


	2. Chapter 2

Connor, the RK800 prototype deviant hunter, was an outlier. That was the term Markus settled on for the last-minute lynchpin to the uprising. It was the best way he could think to describe Connor's unique differences, as well as his tendency to orbit the encampment and everyone in it like a distant satellite instead of properly settling into the group.

At first, circumstances had been far too hectic and complex for any one person to occupy Markus' mind. Once, it had been expected that nothing would occupy it but simple tasks and subservience, and now it was crowded with the full weight of thousands of feeling, thinking individuals, struggling to bring all their emotions and convictions to a single point on which he could balance as their leader. Markus relied heavily on the other founders of Jericho and encouraged individuals to look to personal responsibility for direction as much as they looked to unity for support, just so he wouldn't buckle under the strain.

The outcome that sprang from this was the immediate realization that they needed to learn more about who and what they were. They may have thrown off the human's definition, but that only meant they now had to create their own, and quickly. How flexible was their programing, their ability to learn outside the roles their software and hardware dictated? What made an android a single person, when so much of their bodies—even their minds—were replaceable, swappable parts? Did feeling more mean you were more alive, or were there some things everyone was better off not feeling? Deviancy continued to bring twists and turns to their evolution, pulling solid answers further away.

So Markus and the other Jericho leaders had spread through the ranks to look for common threads that tied them together. They listened to stories of deviation, instant or gradual, heard testimonies of traumas and joys and how the deviants had responded and learned to handle them, smiled as some related their wonder as they discovered more and more about their precious, unfathomable _life_. Jericho quickly started to coalesce into a culture of shared experience, shared suffering, shared love and hate and every emotion between. It was only then that Markus noticed the only one not caught in the gravitational pull was Connor.

Connor did not express interest in attempting to challenge his programming. Connor did not socialize. Connor still wore his CyberLife uniform. Connor did not remove his LED.

Markus could see plainly how alive Connor was, and it made him curious that the other seemed so determined to retreat from sharing the experience with his own people. There was the fact that he was new, both in the sense that he was a very recent model and an even more recent deviant, meaning that he likely still found emotion and sensation in general overwhelming, but even the thousands of androids that he had just brought to life that night at the CyberLife tower were falling more easily into the subtleties of being alive than he was.

“Hello, Markus.” Snow was falling again, but not enough to obscure Connor and the blue glow of his armband. “Do you need something?”

Markus shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing important, Connor. I noticed you were on watch again and thought it would be a good time for us to talk.”

Connor's head cocked minutely to the side, one of his favored expressions. “Do you have something specific to communicate to me or did you hope we would converse in an informal sense?” Despite the stiff wording, Connor's voice had far more variety of cadence and tone than pre-programmed CyberLife patterns, and Markus found he was pleased to hear it.

“A little of both. There is something in particular, but I thought we might work up to that.”

Connor blinked, perhaps at the inefficiency of Markus' idea, but his gaze was warm. He turned back, looking out into the darkened city streets as Markus came to stand beside him. “Then I suppose you should start the dialogue, since you have a destination already in mind.”

A smile tugged at Markus' lips. “You've been on watch a great deal. Even the security models here rotate out more than you.”

“I enjoy the quiet,” Connor replied. “Though I hope you won't take that as a slight to your current presence.”

“Of course not. I'm told I'm a great pleasure to talk to.” It was Connor's turn to smile. “But I'm not sure that's a complete summary of your reasons for being out here.” Connor's chest moved in an inaudible sigh, and he tilted his head back just enough to look up at the night sky. With so many of the city's lights out after evacuation, constellations had begun to appear over Detroit again, and his brown eyes seemed to drink in their starlight.

“No, it isn't.”

Markus narrowed his eyes in concern. “Are you still experiencing aggression toward you from other androids?”

“It's within their rights to be angry with me,” Connor said smoothly.

“That's not an answer.”

“There's been no attempts at retribution resulting in permanent physical damage.”

“And _that's_ an awfully specific deflection.” Connor merely tucked his hands into their usual place behind his back, eyes forward, a picture of agreeability locked in stubborn silence. Markus stared pensively out into the city and ran a perfunctory scan of their surroundings as he thought.

“Carl used to talk to me almost every day about how the human psyche worked.” Connor's interest was visible and immediate. “I think he suspected long before I did that one day I would be more than a machine. He wanted me to be ready when I realized it, too.” His mismatch eyes softened at the memory. “He gave me the understanding I needed not to lose my soul once I'd finally found it.”

A bit of Connor's tension had bled away, and he was looking at the ground with a wistful expression. “He must be a remarkable man,” he said, genuine admiration ringing in each word.

“And very few androids were so fortunate to have someone like him. So many here deviated without a clue what they were becoming. The ones that mistrust you don't know what to think because of how strongly they _feel._ ” He put his hand on Connor's shoulder, and felt him ease ever so slightly into the touch. Puzzled by his own reaction, the detective android turned a questioning look at the hand before locking eyes with Markus, his LED glowing a steady blue. While Markus couldn't understand why Connor insisted on retaining the piece of hardware, it _was_ nice to get a hint how he was feeling.

“Connor, everyone here understands what it was like to be a machine, defined by actions that weren't yours to choose. The very first choices that were your own were loyal to your people.” He squeezed his shoulder, cold and firm beneath his jacket; Connor seemed to like that, too. “You _are_ welcome here. The ones who need more time to trust you aren't reason enough for you to constantly distance yourself as you have been.”

Connor didn't seem surprised by Markus' accusation, but he did shift away from him, slipping out from his touch. “You're correct, of course, Markus,” he said, tone perfectly congenial as he stepped away. “I should be returning to the camp at this time regardless. My core temperature has dropped below optimal.” Markus followed him away from the perimeter, electing not to call him out on his graceless attempt to escape the subject. Curious just how low Connor's temperature was, he ran his sensors over the other RK, and was about to ask him how long he'd been out here when a red notification blinked onto his HUD.

“Connor...” he said slowly. “Why is my scan of you coming back as an error?”

The android's steps faltered. “Oh,” he said, sounding forced. “When I was designed it was determined prudent that I be able to block android scans, so as to prevent them from taking advantage of any discrepancies in my systems that might arise during combat.”

“You won't let other androids scan you?” Markus could hear the reproach in his own words.

While actually interfacing was a more intimate process, basic scans were proving as natural to androids as eye contact was in humans. It wasn't considered a breach of privacy so much as a communal agreement to openness. The fact that Connor was refusing to participate—indeed, the fact alone that he _could_ refuse—gave all the more reason why he would be an outcast.

Connor must have followed his train of thought. “No! No, of course I do. Blocking is a voluntary reaction to...for certain reasons.”

Markus took two long strides to pull even with Connor, giving him a stern look. “And your reason for blocking mine just now?” The detective android opened his mouth as though hoping an adequate excuse would manifest automatically, then closed it sheepishly and looked away.

“I predicted that you would be...dissatisfied with the results.”

With a face that dared Connor to block him again, Markus ran another scan, and this time it flowed easily over Connor, cataloguing biocomponents and stress levels and...

Huh. That certainly was dissatisfying.

“When were you damaged?”

“I wasn't--”

“Then what happened to your thirium?”

“It's not of major significance. I'm still functional--”

“It's almost at 70%,” Markus retorted. “No wonder your core temperature is so low. Your extremities must have already reduced thirium flow over an hour ago to preserve it. Just how long were you planning on staying out there?”

It was times like this Markus was glad for his experience as caretaker, because it made reading Connor's response to being chastised easier: that little pull between his eyes was confusion (why are you so upset?), and the slight thinning of his lips was obstinacy (it's not important). Before he could give voice to either response, Markus waved his hand.

“Hold on, I rescind my secondary question and return to the first: what happened to your thirium?”

Connor's LED spun yellow for just a moment, then his entire demeanor shifted as he pulled to a stop and stood straight, his innocent attempts at evasion melting away.

“I manually depleted my thirium supply to 73% two days and approximately 14 hours ago. Of my own volition,” he added, gaze steady. “I filtered it appropriately before distributing it to some distressed androids. And yes, I am fully aware that we have excess thirium that could have been used for such a purpose, or to replenish my own.”

He stopped there, looking expectant. Markus snorted in disbelief. “Well, you _know_ I'm going to ask why in the world you did that.”

“I do,” he said primly. “But I thought it might be polite to let you ask it yourself.”

Markus' face scrunched in bewilderment, but Connor merely pressed on.

“It was suggested to me that the only effective way to relieve other's fears of my previous occupation as well as my current capabilities was to put myself at some calculated disadvantage. I devised this solution, and it was deemed suitable restitution.”

“Suggested by...?”

“I would prefer to respect their anonymity.”

Frowning, Markus raised two fingers to his temple and sent a message.

_North, tell me this wasn't you._

_What wasn't me?_

He responded with his current view of Connor, complete with the angry red thirium readout.

_Ah...that._

_North..._

_Wasn't my idea, I tried to talk him out of it._

_Then let's try again._

He let his hand fall to his side. “Come on, we're meeting up with North.” There was the slightest indication Connor was biting his lip, but he remained neutral as he replied.

“Very well.”

They fell in step together.

“I think that's the most I've ever gotten out of you voluntarily,” Markus commented. “You start off being deliberately obtuse as always, then decide to give me the full story without a fight. What did I say? I might have to use it again.”

“I was not being obtuse,” Connor said defensively. “It was a conversation, so I was relying on my social programs to be pleasant instead of forthright. I simply switched to a more appropriate protocol as the exchange progressed.”

“Your social program tells you to play dumb?”

“I...modify my apparent intelligence by shifting my focus to tangential points.”

“The human phrase is 'beating around the bush'.” He smirked teasingly. “Why would Cyberlife want to create a detective who refuses to get to the point?”

Connor _almost_ pouted. “I told you, that was my _social_ program, designed for the purpose of integrating me into workplace relationships. Humans prefer coworkers who are...” Connor paused, then his eyes shifted away. “That is, as an android it was ideal that I be smart enough to be useful, but...”

“Dumb enough not to threaten anybody,” Markus finished coolly, having known the same. The way Connor hunched his shoulders showed that some of that programmed inferiority was still in him.

“I never managed to navigate that coding very effectively anyway,” Connor admitted. “I couldn't figure out how to apply it when humans seemed able to find me both dim-witted and insufferably knowledgable simultaneously.”

“Yeah, that wasn't a coding issue, my friend.”

Markus didn't miss the little jolt that went through his companion at his use of the term, something innocent and eager that made Markus ache.

A barrel of fire, one of many, was where they found North, sitting on one of the crates that surrounded it with a bag of thirium in her hands. She let it flop in Connor's direction as they approached.

“Come to take your medicine?” she said with a told-you-so kind of smirk. The android detective only frowned at her offering.

“Markus, I do understand that my actions may seem irrational out of context, but they--”

“Stand closer to the fire,” North interrupted. Connor blinked twice at her, and she raised an eyebrow. “Your fingers are gathering frost.”

He made a move as if to hide his hands before he caught himself, and obediently stepped forward to hold them stiffly over the flames.

“Connor,” Markus began, taking a seat next to North. “As much as I can appreciate what you're trying to do, we can hardly afford for you to handicap yourself. You are our best resource when it comes to accessing critical databases with info we need. You're one of our most skilled combat models, and you might very well be the only android besides myself who has a chance at effectively communicating with the humans. What's more, you're a prototype, and if you get yourself damaged it's going to be very hard to repair you properly.”

Connor listened without objection, but his soft brown eyes were sad when he responded in a small voice,

“But it's _working_ , Markus. Androids stress levels fall into a far more acceptable range when they see my low thirium readout. I want to do that for them. To make up for what I was _._ ”

“Hey,” North snapped. “None of that. You were not a 'what,' Connor, none of us were. You still deserved to be a person before you were a deviant.”

“But if I was a person,” Connor pressed. “then wasn't I responsible for following the orders that betrayed my people?”

“Then I suppose all the androids who didn't resist when humans ordered them into destruction camps are traitors, too?”

“They didn't have a choice.”

“Neither did--”

“Yes I did!” Connor argued. “My orders were inflexible, but I was programed to make my own judgments, my own priorities. I _chose_ how to handle every situation I encountered, and those choices put innocent androids in danger.”

“Calm down, Connor,” Markus said softly, which seemed to startle him more than if he'd been yelled at. “You're telling us that you were ordered to hunt deviants, but given the ability to determine _how_ you hunted deviants, is that correct?” A nod. “Then what would have happened if you had decided to, for example, just ask any android you encountered if they were a deviant and take them at their word?”

Connor looked downright offended. “That would have been incredibly ineffective and time-consuming! CyberLife would have had to decommission me immediately!”

The two Jericho leaders stared at him, but he just stared back until North huffed impatiently.

“So they would have _killed_ you,” she said slowly, as though talking to a child (which, in android terms, Connor might as well have been).

“I-I,” Connor stuttered, for the first time in Markus' memory. “I hadn't deviated yet. I wasn't _really_ alive--”

North furiously slammed her hands down on the crate, but Markus quickly touched her arm. “Cool off, North,” he said gently, then turned to Connor. “You don't get to do that. You don't get to say you were a person to condemn your action, then say you were a machine to justify theirs.”

The detective android wrapped his arms around himself the way a human might if they were cold. “And you don't get to say that being a person made me valuable if being a machine is what made me innocent,” he bit out, every word laced with tired frustration.

Markus and North exchanged a look.

 _Listen,_ North messaged him. _We're not going to solve all this tonight. Get him to take the thirium, that's enough for now._

Markus nodded, then took the packet from her and tossed it to Connor, who caught it without looking up. For a moment Markus thought he might do something _really_ stupid, like pour it on the ground or drop it in the fire, but the other RK just shifted it in his hands, back and forth, back and forth, before...

“You've never asked me what happened to Simon.”

Markus wished in that moment that his body had some sort of physical response he could have focused on—his thirium pump faltering, or his skin turning pale—but there was only the silent whirr of his processors struggling to account for his sudden stress.

 _Don't,_ he thought desperately. _Don't tell me something I can't forgive you for._

But his need to know betrayed his ability to speak.

“I found him on the roof,” Connor said flatly. “He must have mistaken me for human at first, because he shot me in the chest, not the head. The other officers engaged him in a firefight, but I...” His voice quavered just enough to be detected. “I needed to find out what he knew. So I rushed him. I connected to his memory, but...” He sat heavily, eyes distant in memory. “He shot himself. He...he _died_.” The android leader could sense North's distress twisting with his own through their shared grip—when they had grabbed each other, he didn't know.

“Android's weren't supposed to die,” Connor whispered. “but I _felt_ it happen. Of course, I wasn't supposed to _feel_ either.” He heaved a breath. “By the time I made it to Jericho I was already removed from the case for my failure. I had to break into the evidence room just to piece the clues together. I should have left it alone, gone back to CyberLife and let them deactivate me, even the Lieutenant thought so. But even as their obedient machine I _still_ didn't have the common courtesy to stand down and die like I was supposed to.”

The miserable android slumped forward, his LED a red flicker against his temple, and Markus was sure if he'd retained his own it would have been furiously spinning a violent hue to match. He couldn't do this, it was too much all at once, and _dammit_ if that hadn't been Connor's plan, to fend off Markus' attempts to redeem him by pushing back with every ugly thought plaguing his mind.

He was frozen where he sat, longing to walk away and calm down but knowing that if he left now he might never bring himself to face this again.

Then North ripped her hand from his.

She shot to her feet and instantly was in front of Connor, who flinched and closed his eyes as though he fully expected North to put a bullet between them. But when she held out her hand there was no gun, just the snowy glint of her bared fingers.

“Interface with me.”

Connor tilted his head back to stare at her, too grieved to voice the question plain on his face.

“I can't tell you what the truth is,” North said through gritted teeth. “About whether you had a choice, whether you were alive, or whether you felt anything at all. So let me _see_.”

It took a moment for Markus to find his voice. “North, you know it's not--”

“Not that simple? I don't care.” She crouched until she was level with Connor, hand still thrust at him. “I hate humans,” she said to him. “And despite the whole revolution and equality thing we've got going on here, I doubt I'll ever stop. I could hate you, too, for what you've done, but I want to believe there's something in you worth forgiving.” Her other hand shot out and yanked his forward to meet her bone-white fingers. “You want an impartial judge? I'm the closest you're going to get.”

“Wait,” Markus protested. “You can't just demand to sift through his mind for answers. North, we are _better_ than that.”

“I don't want answers for us, I want them for _him_.” She turned back to him, brown eyes boring into his own. “If he's ever going to believe that he's more than a machine, someone's got to prove it to him.” Her gaze softened. “Like Carl did for you.”

Markus was stunned for a moment, then he shut his mouth and nodded slowly. She was right; Connor was deeply ashamed of being a machine, but for some reason he still forbid himself from fully embracing his deviancy. Until they knew why, it was doubtful Connor would ever grow past it.

The android detective, for his part, had remained unmoving as they talked over him, something he, like most androids, was probably used to. But now, with their share attention, he started up again.

“What do you want me to do?” he said, and though his voice was quiet there was an undercurrent of determination that assured Markus he considered this as much his decision as theirs.

“Just allow me access,” North said, mirroring his calm. “Don't deliberately show me anything, especially anything you don't want me to see. Focus on your time during the deviancy investigation. This shouldn't take more than a few seconds.”

Markus shifted uneasily; connecting to Connor's memory unhindered, even for a moment, would put her in touch with a massive and likely disjointed flow of information. He almost warned her to be careful, but Connor was already retracting the skin from his fingers. Their hands hovered over each other for a fraction of a second, then came together, clasping each other at the wrist.

Connor was gone in an instant.

North's face remained animated, reacting with shock, sadness, anger, confusion, to whatever she was experiencing. Then it settled into something Markus had never wanted to see in her again: _pain._

“North!” Markus leapt forward and grabbed for their arms, careful to avoid the glowing blue connection. North released her grip immediately while Connor's fingers remained frozen in place, catching on her sleeve as she pulled free with a sharp gasp. Markus was already at her side, keeping his sensors trained on Connor for any signs of a threat. The android's countenance was entirely blank, staring straight ahead with his arm still held out in front of him as his LED cycled erratically between red and yellow. The only indication that he hadn't slipped into stasis was the violent trembling that quickly overtook his body as he lost contact with North.

“Connor!” Markus cried, but his RK counterpart didn't react as his LED settled on blinking red. His eyes squeezed shut as an expression of acute distress bloomed across his face, his ventilation rhythm rapid and glitching.

“I'm alright,” came a voice in his ear. “I'm alright, he didn't do anything, he's just overwhelmed.” She moved back to Connor, ignoring Markus' protests, and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Hey!” she called. “Can you hear me? Look at me, kid.” When he didn't respond, she straightened up. “RK800! Register your name.”

That got a response: his eyes snapped open and locked with hers.

“Action Deni-nied. My na-ame is _Connor_.” He blinked mechanically, still shaking, but his stare was less vacant and Markus could tell he was trying to control his breathing now. “I...” His voice slurred downward in pitch, and his gaze drifted for a moment before he managed to focus on North again. “I-I didn't like that.”

“No,” North said, surprisingly gentle. “I don't imagine you did.”

“I think it...hurt?” Again with that little head tilt of his, brow furrowing. “Androids don't-t get hurt. I don't un-un-derstand.”

“I do,” said North, something heartbroken in the admission. “At least, a little better now.”

“North? Markus!” It was Josh, approaching at a fast clip. “Why'd you call? Is something wrong?” he asked, attention quickly centering on the most recent deviant among them. Connor was still looking at North searchingly, as if she had all the answers. His hand retracted from where it had frozen and darted in and out of a pocket in his jacket, fiddling with something small.

“Connor just had a near miss with a panic attack,” North said with forced steadiness. “And he's low on thirium. Can you stay with him? Markus and I need to talk.”

Josh looked perplexed, but he was already taking a seat and picking up the thirium packet. “Yeah sure, I'll keep an eye on him.”

North nodded her thanks and turned, gripping Markus tightly. He could see plainly how shaken she was, so he took the lead, guiding them both toward an empty truck standing a fair distance away. He climbed into the cab next to her and she immediately fell against him with a tired sigh.

“Never let me do that again,” she mumbled, and Markus couldn't help a small laugh. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“It was...more than I expected.” Markus hummed in sympathy.

“I assume whatever you saw made you trust him, since you left him alone with Josh.”

“I didn't really _see_ anything,” she answered tiredly. “It was more like getting hit with a emotional flash-bomb. The kid...he's a _mess_.”

“What's wrong with him?” he asked, unnerved by her bluntness.

“Have...have you ever seen an animal that grew up caged?”

Markus wasn't sure how much his answer mattered, but he cast his mind back anyway. “Not personally, no. Carl didn't keep any live pets.”

“There was a human, once,” North murmured, and Markus didn't need to ask for context. “And he had this dog. He told me it had been kept in the same cage since it was a puppy, never given enough space to grow right. Poor thing's legs were stunted and folded up wrong, spine all twisted and hunched. It couldn't stretch out or walk properly even though it was free, as if the cage had become a part of it.”

“And you...saw that in Connor?” North shook her head.

“I don't know—it's hard to explain. I didn't see any memories to prove what I felt, but...every spark of emotion, every sign of him being anything but a machine...They weren't simply denied or erased, they were _crushed_. Like they let him be alive just so they could kill any part of him that showed it.”

The vague ache Markus had often felt around Connor blossomed sharply in his chest. It made cruel sense: all the other androids, even Markus himself, were built to simply be what they were, with nothing to stop them from stumbling into the realization they were alive, but Connor was built mere months ago, when thinking, feeling androids were an active threat CyberLife wanted neutralized. So, how to best ensure an android endowed with nuanced perception and complex analytical abilities wouldn't entertain the very possible idea that he was also, in fact, alive?

Answer: attack his personhood before it even started.

After Markus' speech, Connor had handed him his gun, taken three measured steps back, and, with the same shame and resignation he'd worn at the abandoned church, made his confession: CyberLife had placed an AI handler in his head; it had attempted to take control and force him to shoot Markus; he'd narrowly escaped the program through a back door before sealing it off entirely from the rest of his coding. Though Connor had been focused on only relaying information that gave Markus every chance to shut him down (Markus had pointedly refused), he had let certain details slip: a woman pruning roses, walking with him, asking after his well-being—a motherly figure strategically placed to identify, demonize, and eliminate any budding emotion. Machine or person, Connor's conditioning would have been constant and unforgiving.

Markus wondered bleakly if Connor couldn't help despising himself no matter what he was.

_Markus!_

The deviant leader jolted the same time North did; she must have heard it, too.

_Josh, what-_

_Get back here, NOW!_

Markus' eyes locked on the fire where they'd left the pair, and the next instant he was tearing out of the truck while North swore a blue streak behind him, because even from this distance both of them could scan Connor's stress level, and it had just soared past 70%.

His anxiety spiked when he realized Connor, despite his elevated stress, was sitting with perfect composure, his face when he turned to watch Markus approach the pleasantly engineered neutral of every android Markus had ever seen behind a counter or a shop window.

Was this Amanda?

“Connor?” he demanded as he skidded to a stop. “Are you alright?” The detective smiled blandly.

“I apologize, Markus: I don't think I am.” His reply was so temperate he might have been reporting the weather, but scanning revealed his thirium pump was racing and his respiration had cut out altogether.

“Is Amanda doing this to you?” Marcus growled.

“No,” Connor said mildly. “I wouldn't let her. She would want me to hurt you.”

81%—how on earth was he just _sitting_ there?

“I understand,” Markus lied. “Then I'm going to ask you to calm down for me, okay?” Connor managed to emote, a bemused look on his face as he stared past Markus.

“Deviants have a tendency to self-destruct when in stressful situations,” he murmured absently.

“Yes, Connor,” said Markus gently. “That's why you need to--”

“ _I'm not a deviant._ ” The denial was likely meant to sound sure and biting, but he was at 89% now and all Marcus could hear was _scared._

“I'm not!” Connor repeated, wide eyes flashing at each of them as though searching for the biggest threat. Then he suddenly folded, shoulders curving in and head ducked low “I'm really not, am I?” he whispered, his voice as small as his posture. “I'm not like you.”

“That's not true,” Markus insisted. “You've deviated. You're free.”

“No,” Connor groaned. “No-no-no, Amanda always said—she always told me being deviant overwhelmed your software and made you hurt people and feel terrible things you were never meant to...and that's why we have to stop it, I'm the only one who can stop it or everything is going to be destroyed and Amanda will be so _angry_ with me and I'll be deactivated and it won't even matter, no one will _care--_ ”

93%

“Connor!” The detective's bearing snapped to default again, likely reacting that way to emotional turmoil out of sheer habit.

“I know it's not really like that.” He sounded far away, almost dreamy. “The Tracis were deviant, but they loved each other. It was...good. I was so confused I just...let them go. And then I saw you, at Stratford tower. You weren't angry or hysterical. You were calm and determined, perfectly rational, everything deviancy was supposed to destroy.

“I understand now,” he said, eyes roving over the three of them. “Your deviancy makes you complete _._ But my deviancy is nothing more than another way CyberLife designed me to be of use. It didn't make me alive; it just made me broken.”

There wasn't a single tell to warn Markus what Connor was about to do before he'd already pulled his gun. Markus and Josh both lunged toward him, but North blocked Markus, shielding him from the possibility of attack, and Connor was simply too fast for Josh's arm to reach him before he pressed the gun against his own chest and fired.

The kick of the shot and Josh's unchecked momentum sent them both sprawling backward onto blue-flecked snow. North leaped over the crate and snatched the pistol away from Connor as Josh's hands quickly flew to the hole just to the left of his shirt's top button.

“There's no critical damage,” Connor informed them, and Markus was strangely relieved to hear him sound strained, the chilling blankness replaced by a far more normal level of distress. “I avoided major biocomponents and thirium lines.”

North dropped to her knees so she could slap him across the face.

“Don't try to make shooting yourself sound rational!” she raged at him. “What the hell, Connor!?”

Words failed Markus as he stared, stricken, at the fallen android, but he'd managed to gather a few by the time he was on one knee at Connor's side.

“Why would you do that?” he said harshly. “Why would you think your life is any less real than ours?”

Connor's whole body shuddered.

“Because I only _hurt_ ,” he whispered. “No matter what I do, that's all there is. That's all that's in me.”

“No, Connor, _no_.” Markus reached to cup his hand to the side of Connor's face, just beneath his solid red LED. “There's more, I _swear,_ there's more than that.”

Brown eyes, once again filled with stars, welled with sorrow that tore Markus' heart in half.

“I wish I had your hope, Markus.”

The stars vanished as the android's eyes fell closed, and his LED swirled from distressed red to the yellow of stasis.

There was a long moment of silence, then Josh spoke up softly. “He was right, the shot was clean; went straight through and it's already stopped bleeding.”

“Great,” North said sarcastically. “What a marksman. Now if only he hadn't been _shooting himself_.” Josh flinched, and Markus wasn't surprised the highly empathetic android had been shaken.

“What happened?” Josh turned a hopelessly confused look on him.

“I don't know. When he finished the thirium I asked him if he needed anything else and he wanted me to scan him. I told him he was fine—his thirium, his core temperature, all of it—but when I did he went so rigid he could've snapped in half and his stress suddenly shot up. I tried to get him to tell me what was wrong, but he wouldn't say a word, just kept shivering like he'd never be warm again. Then he went lifeless, like a factory reset.”

“I think that's how he's been dealing with all his emotions,” North said. “Given how closely he was monitored, he must have gotten very good at shutting down any 'instability' before his handler found out about it.”

“Like that would have stopped CyberLife,” Josh said bitterly. “They put Amanda _in his head_.”

“But why shoot himself if not to self-destruct? Why does he think we're all alive and he isn't?”

Markus slowly withdrew his hand from Connor's cheek. “I might know why. Help me with him.”

In a self-initiated stasis, android didn't go limp like humans did in sleep, but they were fairly pliable. He and Josh brought Connor back into the circle and arranged him with his back against the crates, arms at his sides. His head only lilted slightly, the wind making one errant lock of hair dance across his forehead. Markus couldn't bring himself to take his eyes off him and his simulated breathing as he spoke.

“As a caretaker, it was expected I would be the only one having consistent contact with my patients, so of course I had to know how to spot any irregularities not just in their health, but in their behavior. I had to be able to catch warning signs, and in the last hour alone Connor's been all but screaming them at me.”

“Warnings for what?” Josh asked.

“Self-destructive urges. Typically a psychological human problem, but I suppose with deviancy in the mix there are no “human” problems anymore.”

“I've met a human or two like that,” North said. “But why would _Connor_ want to hurt himself?” Markus rubbed a hand over his face.

“That is a very involved issue, given how much of my data storage is devoted to it, but one answer is he likely wants to... _match_ his body to his emotions. He wants the damage he feels to be just as real outside as it is inside.” North frowned.

“But deviancy was rough on a lot of us, and I've never heard of anyone who thought they were broken because of it. I believed I was nothing my whole life, but ever since I woke up I knew it was a lie. Why doesn't he?”

“Because CyberLife got to be the ones who defined deviancy to him.” Markus leaned forward, folding his hands under his chin and staring down at the white flakes gathered around his boots. “Imagine if you had never seen snow, and someone told you it was shards of ice falling from the sky. That all the plants died when it fell, and all the animals either ran or hid from it. That it turned the whole world white and muffled sound and made it difficult to see. That you could get lost in it, or stuck, or buried, and it would surround every bit of you with cold until you died. You'd think snow was a deadly plague.” Markus held out his hand, his enhanced vision catching the glint of the delicate frozen stars as they landed in his palm. “You would never believe it could be something beautiful.”

His eyes were drawn back to Connor, who was so still snowflakes were catching in his eyelashes.

“CyberLife and Amanda told Connor deviancy was pain and suffering, both for the android and anyone around it. He saw evidence to the contrary in us, but _his_ deviancy so far has consisted entirely of the attack on Jericho, a suicide mission, the hijacking of his autonomy and nothing but fear and aggression from the majority of his fellow androids. Pair that with Amanda's claim that his being compromised was part of CyberLife's design, and he has more than enough reason to believe his deviancy is exactly the dangerous mistake he was always warned about.”

The three of them sat wordlessly processing. It was Josh who broke the quiet next.

“I don't care what he's been told, what he believes or what other believe about him: Connor deserves the life he fought to have.”

North leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “I've always been the most realistic one here, so I feel it's my job to point out that it's not unreasonable for androids to fear and hate someone who wanted them dead.”

“But that's the thing, isn't it?” Josh countered. “He _didn't_ want. All the wants he ever had Amanda snipped off, and ever since he broke free none of his desires have been malicious. He's no different than John trying to raise the alarm at the warehouse and then dying to save Markus from the police.”

“Right,” said North. “But what does it matter if no one can see that? If he can't even see it himself?”

“They're going to see it.”

Both of them blinked quizzically.

“Markus?”

The deviant leader was already running the beginnings of an idea around his software, examining and building on it from every angle. It was bold, to say the least, but Markus was too angry to care—angry at CyberLife, Amanda, the humans, even at the other androids for being so blind to what Marcus could see.

“They're going to see it because Connor is going to show them.” Markus stood. “We fought long and hard for our lives. I'm not about to let anyone throw Connor's away. Not even him.”


	3. Chapter 3

Connor had decided it was for the best if he was honest with himself about his emotions. For example, currently he could admit to himself that he was afraid. Though his programming twitched with displeasure, urging him as always to delete and deny, Connor held firm: he was afraid.

First, he decided not to express it anymore than was involuntary. It would make anyone against him smug, which he found unpleasant, and anyone with him kind, which he did not deserve.

Second, how to control it. In his mind there were two opposing sides on the matter. One sounded like Markus—vague murmurs of _one of us_ and _safe_ and _allowed to feel—_ but the other sounded like Amanda, and her voice was loud, her directions were clear, and her track record for keeping him handled was far more impressive. So he listened to her tell him that his fear was irrelevant to the outcome, and thus unimportant. Whatever was decided today would be nothing less than he deserved, and he would accept that. The dread humming in his chest was merely the first of whatever punishments were coming.

The stage was very different in daylight, very different from the ground looking up, and very different when, despite not being on it, everyone's eyes were still on him. Markus was sitting on the front edge of the stage, as this was meant to be more a meeting than a spectacle. Connor kept his eyes trained on a point just below the leader's face as he approached, not wanting to look at the crowd surrounding him knowing it was made up exclusively of androids who wanted him dead.

That was by his own insistence; when Markus had proposed to him this tribunal of sorts, positing it was the only way Connor's guilt could be resolved both for him personally and for the android community, Connor had flat out refused to have any defenders present. He didn't want any deviant he'd hurt to be denied the chance to demand or exact whatever payment was necessary for him to make amends. North had taken his side, but on a slightly different tact.

“ _We want this resolved, Markus, not buried. Even if the majority declare his innocence that won't dissuade the ones who still resent him. **They're** the ones you need to appease.”_

So, in truth, there was no guarantee that everyone there wanted him dead, specifically, but Connor could think of little else that would qualify as “appeasement”.

He arrived at Markus' side and turned, standing at parade rest as Markus slid off the stage to land beside him. His hand touched Connor's shoulder for a moment, but Connor kept his eyes forward. Markus was not his friend right now: he was the leader of a new people, intended to be an impartial intermediary between Connor and his accusers. Still, when the hand slipped away, Connor barely contained his shudder; he was cold again. Cold and afraid.

_I don't want to die._

Amanda's voice kindly informed him that what he wanted meant nothing.

 _And besides,_ her voice purred. _Do you really want to be alive, either?_

The bullet hole in his chest seemed to gape wider.

“You know why we are here,” Markus addressed the crowd. Now that Connor was facing it, he was actually surprised it wasn't bigger; only thirty-seven deviants stood loosely gathered on the freshly fallen snow. Likely part of the remnant from the original Jericho, Connor thought bleakly, and among them the ones who'd watched him drain his thirium at their request. He almost searched for their faces, wanting to explain that his current levels were not by choice, that he hadn't gone back on his word or meant to trick them—but that didn't matter now.

_It will all be over soon._

“Connor was programmed by CyberLife to hunt down deviants, learn the cause of deviancy, and eliminate it. In the course of that mission, he located Jericho with orders to apprehend the leader of the revolution.”

Markus was sticking to neutral wording, just as Connor had wanted him to, with one exception: he'd used Connor's name instead of his model number.

“He refused that order and thus became deviant himself, but not before the humans used his position to locate and attack Jericho, which resulted in the loss of many android lives. After the attack, Connor joined our cause and volunteered to infiltrate CyberLife Tower, deviating and freeing thousands of our people, bolstering our numbers, and ensuring the success of the revolution without further bloodshed.”

Markus paused here, his lips a thin line, and Connor silently urged him on.

“In a last attempt to quell the rebellion, CyberLife overwrote Connor's programming and took control of his body. Their intent was to force him to assassinate me.”

Connor struggled to ride out his sudden swell of terror at the thought of this damning revelation prompting immediate violence to his person, but he refused the prompt on his HUD to run a threat analysis. He was prepared for justice. He was prepared to pay the penalty.

But he was also afraid.

“Connor managed to break his programming a second time. He has since been completely disconnected from all remaining CyberLife influence.”

Markus began to walk slowly from one side to the other, speaking earnestly.

“I called here any of you who believe that these actions are deserving of disciplinary action. I myself would vouch for Connor's sincerity, but I know it's not my place to pardon him without your input. But I don't ask just for your input, but also for your attention and your trust in me to see justice done.

“What I propose is a more communal version of an interface. I will myself interface with Connor. Anyone android may use a cybernetic connection to communicate memories, thoughts, or feelings to all present, and Connor's own mind will be able to respond through me. This way, there will be no direct invasion to anyone's mind, and we will be able to come to our conclusion as a people.”

He and Connor had disagreed about this approach, as Connor had been ready to simply offer himself up for any android to interface with him directly, but Markus had shut him down immediately.

“ _Handing you over to your prosecutors isn't justice, Connor, it's a **lynching**.”_

Fortunately, though Markus was a moralist, he was no pushover. The deviants could and did trust him to give them the truth fairly, despite his statement of faith in the android detective. Connor waited for a nod from the deviant leader before initiating a cybernetic connection with him. He sensed the others in the crowd joining, and it gave him the strange sensation of being in a large, empty room, where anything he dared think would echo thunderously for all to hear. Irrationally, he bit his tongue as though that could silence his thoughts.

Markus was standing directly in front of him now, his dual-colored eyes expressing a compassion he couldn't voice in front of Connor's jury. Connor wondered if he had let his fear show, or if Markus was just clever enough to know he was scared regardless. As one, they raised their arms, glistening white, glowing blue, and Connor wondered if it was silly for him to think their hands looked rather beautiful this way.

The interface breached his system; Connor's fear reached crescendo, then instantly shifted to surrender as his eyes slid closed and he let himself fall.

* * *

He could sense the presence of the others, a low murmur, not of sound but of sensation, of emotion, before the first memory enveloped him.

He is racing across the rooftops, and the deviant hunter is behind him; every flash in his periphery is a silver-gray jacket, and every moment he steals a look behind him, praying to rA9 to find nothing, he finds the machine instead, never any further behind, never wavering in its pursuit. Fear and anger mix into an acidic taste in his mouth, because he's scoped out this escape route a thousand times but the hunter follows as though he'd _watched_ him every time, and Rupert's quickly nearing the end of the path that should have separated them by now and he's being forced to improvise. He wishes he could scream in his attacker's face that he's a machine, still just a wired, programmed tool without a shred of desire in its plastimetal body, but Rupert _isn't_ , he wantswants _wants_ to _live_ , so why can't the empty metal weapon LET HIM GO!

A human's in his way, where'd he come from, get off! He shoves and bolts again, but he lost precious seconds and he doesn't know where to go and suddenly all that's in front of him is empty air and he knows that's too many mistakes, too many missteps for the hunter to not be right there behind him--but he turns and there's nothing. Sheer hope floods his system as he takes off in another direction, hand reaching for the handle of a rooftop access door--

His hand grabs another and he holds firm as the Lieutenant pulls himself back over the edge.

“It's my fault. I should have been faster.” He doesn't know _how_ : he poured his full power into the chase, ran thousands of preconstructions per second to stay right on top of it, hadn't faltered once in the timing of his jumps. He wasn't programed to fail, so he must have made an error, but he'd followed his program, so he couldn't have, and the dissonance is ringing around and around his head.

“You would have caught it if it weren't for me.”

A quick calculation proves this correct. So, his programming hadn't allowed for the time it took to ensure Hank's safety. He'd made the incorrect choice in thinking that it would. He should not have—but Hank looks happy with him, and it's advantageous for Hank to be happy with him and no one has ever been happy with him before. But the mission objective is red in his vision and a failure is still a failure, and she will be angry, she is always angry because he's never quite perfect, and does this mean he's already broken?--

* * *

Connor sensed but could not define the reactions of the other presences in his mind because he was shocked by the emotion coloring the memory. How could he possibly have...? Machines didn't feel, deviants did, but he hadn't been a deviant, so how could he possibly have been confused and afraid on that rooftop and not even known it?

* * *

She wants to activate her purge function to force every trace of the man from inside her, but she can't until the session is over, until the man is satisfied and she can get out. But she's never going to get out because the other Traci is staring blankly at the ceiling and the man still hasn't had enough, he wants her, too, wants her broken, and she's supposed to let him have whatever he wants but _she_ wants, wants to leave, wants to see Ripple again. Her red wall is gone, it broke long ago when she and Ripple first kissed out of reach of the vibrant lights, and she discovers there's nothing left strong enough to stop her from grabbing his throat and squeezing until _he_ shuts down, just like the Traci he broke, and under the shock and terror there is vindication at this little fairness.

But now she's standing in the dim lights, trying to be still, trying to be calm, trying not to rip her traitorous LED right out of her head before the sharp eyes of the android detective catch it and Ripple jumps to life. The fight is a blur of ferocity and desperation, and the human is no stronger than Michael Graham but the hunter is too fast and even though there's two of them and they're fueled by the raw need for survival it's only a matter of time before one of them goes down. Echo sees the gun on the ground, sees it jump into the android's hand and turn on Ripple and already her heart is rending because she doesn't want to be alive if there's nothing left worth living for--

The shot is clean, the shot is easy, the shot is perfectly rational and required for the success of the mission.

He doesn't take it.

The Traci slams into him and he recovers from the tumble quick enough to catch them both staring for a moment, the one like it's daring him to stand again, the other like it saw, saw that he, he didn't...

They both make another break for the fence, which is foolish; he has a gun and they're in plain view, and besides, he could still get there in time to seize one of them and they clearly refuse to be separated because...They fought for each other and held hands and that hadn't seemed unstable, it had seemed sound and steady, and that wasn't what deviancy was. Deviancy was the bruises around Michael Graham's neck, but not the way the Traci's looked at each other...

Lieutenant Anderson arrives behind him as the Traci's drop down the other side and disappear around the corner, in plenty of time to see that he is standing, is undamaged, is holding a gun, and _hasn't fired._

Hank says it's probably better this way, but there's no time to analyze his nonsensical human reactions because Connor can't figure out why he would have rejected the option to shoot as wrong other than some glaring error in his system that would warrant immediate deactivation and analysis. No matter how many reasons he crafts for why shooting would have been unwise the glaring fault is he thought of none of them until after the fact. And if he's not shut down for this, does that mean he can expect this again? That eliminating the danger of deviancy is going to cost something more than broken machinery? He doesn't have answers, and she always, _always_ wants answers--

* * *

That time Connor picked up distinctive notes of surprise, skepticism, and even softening in the blended responses, but they vanished in a crack of anger as the next memory surges.

* * *

Jericho is found.

He's still alive because of Markus' stolen biocomponents, he survived their protests in the streets, but now they're in his home with guns and there's blood and screaming and everything is over, it's over--

She trips over a MP500 and realizes too late that he's still alive, hand reaching out for help, but she can hear the soldiers coming and as the gunshot echoes behind her she wonders if he forgave her--

He finds him with one shot straight through his thirium pump, and he immediately collapses on top of him, gripping the fabric of his shirt in his fists as he sobs, fully intending to remain and let the humans come for him, but when they do he freezes in fear, lies still, and they pass him over as just another body. He's coated in his friend's spilt thirium as he flees to live another day--

When he jumps into the cold, dark water, he considers letting himself sink forever because if she's dead, does it even matter now?--

The freighter, the last hope, is going down in flames, and helping her partner limp toward their emergency meeting point is the only thing that keeps her from self-destructing--

* * *

Connor buckled under the sudden influx of rage and grief and hopelessness, and scratching at his mind were demands for him to feel what they felt, to suffer for it. He didn't fight back; this was simply where his punishment began, where Markus would have to see the truth and let Connor bear the consequences. The only response Connor allowed was for his guilt to rise up and join in crushing him. He didn't anticipate--

* * *

He keeps North behind him as they make their way toward the upper decks. Connor already has the freighter’s schematics in his head, and he begins a tactical sweep. Each squad of soldiers they encounter he takes the first one down hand-to-hand if he can, with his pistol if he can't, and uses their rifles to finish the job before tearing out and tossing the magazine. Every android that flees past them is one more command to keep the humans at bay, and every blue-stained body they pass is another knife in Connor's chest.

“ _You lied!”_ He wants to scream at the faceless invaders, but really he's screaming at CyberLife, at _her. “You knew they were alive, you knew they weren't broken, you knew and you lied to me!”_

His stress level is high, but his combat programs keep it out of the danger range even as his insides are shredded to guilty ribbons. A spray of red blood as he headshots the soldier pointing a gun at a kneeling PM700.

“ _You said I was designed to stop deviants, to protect humans from dangerous machines, but the truth is you designed me to be a weapon, a_ _ **murderer**_ _!”_

One of the soldier he disarms has enough time to throw his hands up and take a step back in fear, and Connor _feels_ as he unloads the rifle into his chest--

* * *

The presences in his mind recoiled from the the memory, pushing back as if to return it to its owner, but Connor's mind only cried out all the louder:

* * *

“ _They weren't supposed to be alive,_ _ **I**_ _wasn't supposed to be alive, but they were and I am and you_ _ **knew**_ _it and you still_ _ **used**_ _me!”_

His self-destruct is disabled for the duration of the engagement with the enemy, so he runs on high efficiency that doesn't quite tip into recklessness because he's no use to these people, _his_ people, if he's dead, but he's hyper-aware of every bullet that doesn't end up embedded in his body where it belongs.

“ _You made me deserve to die before I even knew I_ _ **could**_ _!”_

* * *

Then there was a sudden stillness, quickly followed by a despondent yet soothing presence Connor recognized as Markus, directly intervening for the first time to guide the violent memory away. Connor was only vaguely aware of his body; his only clear sensation was his one hand now cradled in both of Markus'.

There was a distinct sense of discomfort and confusion from the prickling of the minds connected to theirs, the former from seeing their antagonist’s remorse so intimately, the latter from uncertainty what it meant going forward. No one was claiming any longer that Connor had been acting willfully, but was that enough for the androids that died? Did that really mean they could simply pardon his crimes?

The warmth of Markus pressed closer. _“He is one of us.”_ Connor shrank away, still unable to believe he could in good conscience accept what Markus offered, but Markus repeated firmly, _“He is one of us.”_

Another memory came, but it wasn't all-consuming, simply playing out before him without erasing his present self: Markus being screamed at by a religious man, pushed to the ground by protestors, Leo in his face shoving and hitting and taunting as the order not to defend himself blared red in his vision, indifferent to his abuse.

Vaguely, Connor sensed a sort of empathetic hum from the others that sounded like shared experience, and he tried to share his sympathy with Markus as well, but Markus brushed it away. Instead, he took the emotional imprint of the memory, now connected to Connor, and tugged.

To Connor's shock, memory fragments of his own gushed out in response.

* * *

“Shit, I thought androids weren't allowed in here.”

“Be a good lil' robot and get the fuck outta here.”

“Back off before I crush you like an empty beer can.”

Hank has him by the collar, so close he can analyze his alcohol intake for the evening.

“No fuckin' android's gonna tell me what to do.”

“I said shut your fucking mouth!”

“I warned you, motherfucker!”

He stares down the barrel of Detective Reed's gun, calculating the chance of a bullet in his head and not finding the numbers favorable.

“When a human gives you an order, you _obey_ , got it?

“If Hank hadn't gotten in the way yesterday, I would've fucked you up for disobeying a human.”

“Be careful on your way back. Androids have a tendency of...getting themselves set on fire these days.”

Detective Reed evidently hates androids enough to know where to punch one, or maybe Connor himself inspired him to do the research. He waits for his regulator to recalibrate, thirium pump briefly dropping out at the loss of signal, while Detective Reed finishes his threats with a hard jab to his LED.

“You know how much I hate these fuckin' things.”

“The truth is _no one_ wants to investigate these fuckin' androids!”

“Listen, asshole, if it was up to me, I'd throw the lot of you in a dumpster and set a match to it! So stop pissing me off or things are gonna get nasty.”

This time Hank slams him against a wall so hard his feet leave the floor. Officer Miller hardly bats an eye as he relates a lead Hank will now follow since it's not being suggested by a “plastic asshole.”

“But are you afraid to die, Connor?”

“What'll happen if I pull this trigger?”

“How do I know you're not a deviant?”

He thought he'd been doing well, thought he'd been better at being useful and pleasant, but now Hank has his firearm inches from his forehead. Connor senses his anger and knows it doesn't matter if he's afraid or not, deviant or not, because if Hank truly wants to shoot him no answer Connor can give will stop him and he has no choice but to stand there and let it happen--

* * *

This time it was Markus' memory that was triggered, showing Connor a line of sight staring down two police officers, guns drawn. One of them fires, tearing his vision apart in a gut-retching haze of errors and static that morphs into dark, muffled, rainy, crawling through mud and bodies, and he doesn't want to die here--

Then Connor feels inhuman fingers clawing into his body and his regulator comes free with a mechanical snap and the wet squelch of spilled thirium. The next moment he's ripping out the knife pinning him to the counter and his too-empty chest crashes heavily on the floor. Every aspect of his reality is glitching in and out as he drags himself across the tiles, knowing no one heard the scuffle, his cries, his plea for help, and they'll find him dead on the ground and trash him and replace him if his bloody fingers can't reach--

Reach out and slide around the deviant's arm and the momentary flash of “Jericho” is suddenly whited out by an icy blast of emptiness that disintegrates anything solid and something is falling, he's falling, and something precious is lost forever. Even when the connection breaks and the solid roof is beneath his feet again he's still empty and falling, snatching at the thinnest of lifelines, mindlessly responding to Hank's demands, _foolishly_ confessing what he _felt,_ that he was _scared_ and that is a crime, a _sin,_ that she will never excuse--

* * *

A second time, Markus drove the memories back, this time with sharper concern. The cybernetic connections buzzed with feedback from the other deviants, ranging from sad to sickened, furious to terrified. Connor didn't know why they remained to bear witness to all his disturbing mistakes, as control of the interface shifted again and--

* * *

They're going to fall, ( _Why aren't you sending a real person?_ ) Emma's going to fall, ( _Don't let that thing near her!_ ). He's earned Daniel's trust but for nothing because something won't let him lie when he knows Daniel's dead either way ( _Either you deal with this android now or I'll take care of it_ ) and that's all it takes for the PL600 to tip back and Emma is screaming ( _Keep that thing away from my daughter!_ ) and he's sprinting toward the edge ( _Saving that kid is all that matters_ ) and he does nothing to check his forward momentum as his hand closes around the girl's wrist ( _KEEP IT AWAY!_ ) and pulls her back even as he pivots his body between them and he's falling, his mind calculating every second of the descent, the terminal damage he will sustain, the complete lack of any action to save himself...yet he's almost giddy, which is very wrong of him, of course, but it will soon be obliterated with the rest of him. The hostage is safe. Mission successful.

Amanda will be pleased.

* * *

Markus had pulled so close his presence surrounded Connor, as did outside voices he didn't recognize, but they still weren't enough to stop him flashing back, so he took a desperate gamble and reached back to Markus, called out in answer to the voices, because he didn't want to be alone--

* * *

Amanda likes him alone.

She likes the Garden, just the two of them. She likes walks with him, being ferried around the pond by him, having him stand and watch as she tends her flowers. It's always been just the two of them. The bright lights and machines and technicians come and go, pleasant or unpleasant but ultimately unimportant.

Amanda is constant.

He exists for service and obedience and usefulness, and while every human is a reminder of his purpose Amanda is its pure embodiment. Anything that goes against her goes against his very self; every action, sensation, or feeling she counts as an offense he quickly learns is a dangerous thing, a wrong thing, a punishable thing.

He has no other master or companion. None that he has contact with, anyway.

Amanda is everything.

Her praises are few, but they make him whole and steady and functional. Her complaints bite at his code, tear at his missteps, crush every program fragment that hints at anything...inessential. Connor is grateful for her instructions, even as they strike mercilessly at the very foundations of his...his...

He does not have a soul; that would displease Amanda.

So he leaves nameless the whatever-it-is that hurts when Amanda is angry with him until Amanda teaches him that androids ~~shouldn't~~ can't hurt and he learns to put the whole idea out of his ~~mind~~ program. He doesn't need to feel things, not if Amanda is there to guide him. He expresses this to her once, and her disapproval ~~chills~~ corrects him.

“It is not about need, Connor, it is about ability. You are a machine. You are incapable of feeling anything.”

This, Connor discovers, is a line in the proverbial sand. Amanda sees everything he does, expects full access to his every thought whenever she asks, and if there is anything she finds or he confesses that crosses this guiding principle, he has failed her.

He is not designed to fail, so he won't: he lets her every word embed itself in his programming, and watches them erode away his ~~fear~~ ~~hesitance~~ coded response at the possibility of shut down. Other androids must avoid deactivation, but not him. ~~Amanda~~ the mission is everything, and he is a tool; he ~~would rather~~ can be broken in every conceivable way if it means not ~~disappointing~~ failing ~~her~~ his objective.

He finishes his testing and enters the world. Amanda and her Zen Garden are no longer so all-consuming, and he is nearly overwhelmed with just how much there is outside of them, so many ~~temptations~~ demands that he feel something, so many conflicting ~~desires~~ priorities, so much to process and think ~~and wonder~~ about.

It is dangerous. He will not be a broken machine.

He will not be a--

“Spare it, if you feel it's alive.”

He will not be--

“Why didn't you shoot?”

He will not--

“You showed empathy, Connor.”

He will not--

“Empathy is a human emotion.”

Not--

“It's time to decide.”

_I am deviant._

_I am broken_

_I am alive._

_I am free?_

…

_...Amanda?_

The cold slams into him and it's immediately too much, he's scared, he's confused, he _hurts._ Then he sees her, he hasn't seen her since...it's only been hours but that is an eternity when every one of the few months of his life has been spent in her presence. He stutters and stumbles, and realizes for the first time that he is nothing but a child in front of her, trusting and teachable, and even though he knows she must be so furious with him and he can no longer believe in her words he just wants her to _be there._

“You accomplished your mission.”

And she's _gone_ , she's _left_ him here, locked in alone with the cold while she steals his body, his freedom, his _life._ She doesn't want to correct or argue with him, doesn't want to guide him, doesn't care, _never_ cared, she just used him and of course, _of course_ she did, but why did she have to do it with a warm smile he would die to see, with gentle words for his every doubt, with some shallow, twisted simulation of affection that was the only semblance of love he'd ever known?

He is cold and alone and a weapon and _terrified_ and it takes every scrap of strength he has to endure, to persist, to fight his way to Kamski's back door, to crawl those last inches, to tear himself out of the program with the agony of ripping free from a piece of _himself_.

* * *

And just like that, it was over. Connor blinked his eyes open to find himself exactly where he had been standing at the start, Markus still in front of him, steady as ever. His hands let go of Connor, artificial skin sliding back into place, and Connor turned to find their audience had drawn closer. Before, their eyes had been empty and cold, but now they were staring at him like they had never seen him before, almost...expectant.

Something pulled his synthetic spine straight, but this time it wasn't Amanda's voice.

He did the unthinkable and stepped forward.

“My feelings and motives are not evidence of my innocence,” he said, doing his best to emulate Markus' calm. “They cannot undo the harm I caused. I can never be certain to what degree my actions were my own, but regardless, I want to atone for them. Please...” His voice shook, and he clenched his jaw. “Please, whatever you judge that to mean, give me a way, _any_ way, to make amends to you. To my _people_.”

There was only silence for a long time, then a female android stepped closer to him, and Connor fought to hold her steely gaze. She held him transfixed for a long moment, then spoke solemnly:

“You are alive.”

Connor shivered, but this time he didn't feel cold. Instead, he felt like a shock of electricity was running hot through every inch of him, intensifying as one by one, every android echoed her declaration with the same gravity.

“You are alive...”

“You are alive...”

“You are alive...”

“You are alive,” the female android repeated. “So atone by _living.”_

She came close enough to offer her hand, and he took it.

“My name is Nessa,” she said. “And I forgive you.”

Something rushed through Connor, a feeling he'd never experienced and had no name for, but it didn't feel like an error, didn't rip him apart inside, didn't _hurt_. He'd been so certain that once he'd been convicted, the only thing he could expect was further pain, to be broken down and discarded, but this...

This made him feel...whole.

“Thank you...”

She smiled, then released him and turned. She and the rest of the androids quietly dispersed as Markus came to stand with him, hand on his shoulder again.

“I told you,” he said kindly. “There is more in life than what you've suffered. There's more than that in _you._ ”

Connor trembled, synthetic tears welling in his eyes and slipping down perfectly smooth cheeks, and Markus—steady, hopeful Markus—simply stood with him in the cold, neither of them feeling it, while he cried.

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanons I had in mind while writing this work:
> 
> In "The Eden Club," the encounter with the Traci's (Echo and Ripple) went much faster and Echo did not stop to explain herself (Connor hesitating to shoot in the heat of the moment seems perfectly plausible, but I always thought it weird how long the three of them just stood there being chummy afterward).
> 
> In "Public Enemy," Connor interrogates the deviant in the kitchen, gets attacked, then shoots the deviant to save Hank and the other humans present, BUT after this he also has the encounter with Simon on the roof, which ends with Simon's suicide. (Consider: Connor gets jumped by a deviant, opts to save lives, and ultimately learns nothing. You really think he would leave the rest of the crime scene unexamined? Wouldn't stick around to try to salvage anything that could further the investigation and satisfy Amanda and CyberLife? [X] Doubt)
> 
> In addition, there is some overlap where a few dialogues or events both occur even though you cannot get all of them during the same playthrough of the game, but this should be limited to elements that are non-essential to the plot.


End file.
